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ON 



AMERICAN 



MORALS AND MANNERS 



BY REV. ORVILLE DEWEY, D. D. 



Reprinted from the Christian Examiner and Religious Miscellany. 



BOSTON: 

WILLIAM CROSBY, 

118 Washington Street. 

1844. 






PRinTXD BT ANDREWS, fRERTISS AND 9TUOLET, 

No. 4 Devonshire Street. 






ON 



AMERICAN MORALS AND MANNERS. 



We propose to offer some observations in this article on 
American morals and manners. There is, at this moment, a 
very extraordinary crisis of opinion in Europe with regard 
to this country. Our national character is not only brought 
into question, but it is brought into question as furnishing 
grounds for a decision upon the form of our Government, 
upon the great cause of Republican institutions. 

For reasons then, deeper than those which concern our 
national reputation, — and yet this is not indifferent, — this 
subject deserves attention. We have no desire to over- 
rate the importance of this country ; but it is undoubtedly 
the great embodiment of the leading principle on which the 
history of the world is to turn for many years to come. 
When at some future time a philosophical history of the 
present age shall be written, this country will occupy a 
place in it, the very converse of that which it now holds in 
the thoughts of most men in the Old World. That future 
time will far better understand the map of human affairs, 
not to say our literal geography, than does the present. It 
will be seen that the tree of freedom, planted on this 
Western continent, has shot its roots and fibres through 
the whole of Europe ; beneath the soil of all her ancient 
and venerable institutions. Whether it shall stand and 
flourish and lend strength to the world ; or whether, over- 
turned by whelming floods, it shall draw the world down 
with it, or leave it rent and torn by the disruption of its 
ties — this is the question. We are not to be told that we 



4 

are now speaking great words with little meaning. Those 
ties, we affirm, exist. Tlie humbler classes in Europe may 
know definitely but little about us. But from out of this 
unknown world, from beyond the dim and spreading cur- 
tain of the sea, has come to them a story that they will 
never forget. They have heard first of a people who can 
eat the fruit of an unentailed soil, of their own soil ; and 
we can testify from observation, that that word, ownership, 
is like a word of magic to them. They have heard, next, 
of a people who can read ; to whom is unrolled the myste- 
rious page of knowledge, the lettered wisdom of all man- 
kind. Yes, and they are demanding and gaining that 
boon, that American privilege, from their own Governments. 
They have heard, once more, of a people, who are their 
own governors, who make their own laws and execute 
them, and whom no man with impunity can wrong or 
oppress. Yes, in the lowliest cabins of Europe, they have 
learned all this. Let all the crowned powers of the world 
unteach it, if they can. This is no dream to them ; it is a 
fact. There is example for it. And this one example is of 
more weight than all the books of theory that have been 
written from the time of Plato to this day. 

The great controversy of the age, we have said in a 
former article, is the controversy about freedom. To put it 
in a more exact and practical form, it is a question about 
Government. How men shall govern themselves, or 
whether they can govern themselves at all, or, in other 
words, by what forms they are best governed ; this is the 
question. And it is a momentous question. A good- 
natured easiness, or philosophic indifference upon this point ; 
the sage dictum — of Dr. Johnson or of any body else — 
that happiness is about the same under all Governments ; we 
cannot understand at all. We know that there are deeper 
things than Government, affecting men's welfare ; but we 
say, this, nevertheless, affects it. Nay, and it has an influ- 
ence, in many ways, upon those deeper things — senti- 
ments, morals, modes of thought, views of hfe, the cheer- 
fulness and hopefulness of life. If " oppression makes a 
wise man mad," it often makes a whole people worse 
than mad — unprincipled, immoral, and stupid or frivolous. 
If a single bad man in high station may corrupt many, what 
extended and blighting shadow over a country must be 



cast by the enthroned image of wrong! It dishonors and 
degrades, it vexes and demoralizes a people. Besides, 
Government either helps or hinders individual development. 
It expands or contracts the whole man ; for it touches his 
freedom, education, religion. It concerns not only the 
man's virtue, but the man's manhood. Unless we were 
to say, as we might more justly, that virtue, rightly con- 
strued, is the manhood of man. 

From these reasons, as well as from man's natural right 
to be free, has arisen the conviction in all liberal and gen- 
erous minds, that the freest Government, compatible with 
human safety, is to be preferred to all others. 

Now of such a Government, the freest in the world at 
least, America has given an example. The eyes of the 
world were directed to it. Could it succeed ? If it could, 
it was virtually an answer to every argument for political 
wrong ; for absolute monarchy, for primogeniture, for legit- 
imacy in all its forms. Could it succeed ? More than 
sixty years of success it has counted ; no nation on earth 
has been in a happier condition, none more flourishing in 
affairs, more correct in morals, more submissive to law, or 
more loyal to its government. Sixty, nay, nearly seventy 
years have passed over a nation, experiencing, meanwhile, 
all the vicissitudes of peace and war, and of commercial 
prosperity and adversity, and still it has a being ; it has 
has not faded away like a Utopian dream from these 
blessed shores ; it is no mushroom empire ; it stands firm 
and strong. And yet now, at this late hour, all at once, 
this experiment is distrusted and discredited throughout 
the whole of Europe. 

:^^It is certainly a very remarkable crisis in public opinion, 
and, on every account, demands attention. If this present 
distrust is a mere freak or whim of the public mind, that 
character should be fixed upon it. If it arises from misap- 
prehension, the error should be promptly exposed. If 
there are any just grounds for it, most especially does it 
concern us in America to know it. 

Let us then look carefully into the case of America, with 
reference to this distrust. What are the grounds of it ? 
And how far are they sustained, if they are sustained at all, 
by the facts ? What is there in this American nation — 
a great nation ; consisting of many millions of people ; pros- 
it 



6 

perous, peaceful, happy ; free, powerful, and respectable, we 
hope — what is there that justifies any alarmist, any croaker, 
in saying that the great experiment of this people in gov- 
ernment is coming to nought, or that can warrant foreign 
writers, who should feel that they have a reputation to pre- 
serve, in speaking of tiiis country in terms of gross indig- 
nity and ribald scorn ? 

The first charge that we shall examine, since at present 
it stands foremost of all, is that of the repudiation of public 
debts. 

It is not easy to understand the feeling of all Europe on 
this point, without coming into actual contact with it. On 
a late visit to the Old world, we were amazed to observe 
the length to which this charge of repudiation is carried. 
Perpetually, without one single exception among all the 
persons who addressed us, we were approached with an air 
and tone of sympathy for the sad case of America. The 
conversation usually ran in this manner. " A terrible 
thing this, in America ! " " What thing ? " we said. 
" Why, this repudiation, you know." " But who has repu- 
diated ? " " Who ? Why ! the States, all the States, or the 
most of them ; it is the doctrine now in America." " Nay, 
sir," was our reply, " let us understand this matter, if you 
please, before we proceed any farther. We say that the 
States have not repudiated their debts. We say that there 
is no such thing as repudiation in America, except in regard 
to limited portions of the debts of two of the States where 
the just obligation to pay is denied. Michigan alleges, 
that as certain monies which she proposed to borrow, never 
found their way into her treasury, she it not obliged in good 
faith to reimburse the lender. Mississippi contends, that she 
is not not legally nor honestly bound to pay certain bonds, 
because they were sold and were bought in known viola- 
tion of the very condition on which they were issued. We 
do not say that these are sufficient grounds of defence. 
We think that the acts of the authorized agents of a State, 
should bind the State. But still we say, that neither of 
these is an act of open, unblushing repudiation. There 
is no such thing in America. We believe, there never can 
be. It is a case, not of repudiation, but of simple bank- 
ruptcy. The States cannot pay at present ; is that a 
crime ? " '• But they can pay," was the reply often made. 



" They can lay a direct tax, for the purpose of paying the 
interest at least. Or, at any rate, they could come forward 
and relieve the public mind by saying that they acknowl- 
edge their liabihty, and mean in due time to meet it. 
They knew that suspicions were flung upon their good 
faith, and they have done nothing to remove them." 
" Consider," we said in reply, " how little the mass of the 
people are apt to feel themselves implicated in the acts of 
the Government. They hear that there is a deficit in the 
treasury ; they suppose that it will be supplied in some 
way. without ever suspecting that their honor is compro- 
mised or that their intervention is necessary. Nor does it 
materially alter the case, that ours is a republican or repre- 
sentative government. It is a way of thinking that long 
since came into the world, with regard to the action of all 
Governments. The public conscience does not feel itself 
responsible for the acts or neglects of Government. We 
wish it did, among ourselves. We are willing to hear any 
thing that tends to elevate the public conscience. And in 
this view, we could wish that either of the two things before 
suggested had been done ; that is to say, either that the 
voice of the people had demanded a direct tax, or a most 
open and formal profession of a purpose to pay. But the 
question now is ; does the failure to do one or the other 
of these things indicate a want of principle among the 
people, a willingness that the debt should never be paid ? 
Would any other people have aroused themselves — the 
English or the French — to meet a case like this? Would 
they not have said, ' The government will provide ; the 
thing will right itself in due time ? ' Would not the affair 
have been a parcel of the national budget, rather than a 
part of the national conscience ? " 

We think indeed that tiie Governments of the delinquent 
States ought to have come forward in the late crisis, when 
their bonds were dishonored in every market in the world, 
and to have said, ' We hold the public faith and honor to 
be sacred, and we firmly believe and fully intend tiiat these 
debts shall be paid.' This the suffering bond-holders had 
a right to demand, at the least ; and they did demand it. 
They said, and they still say, ' You cannot pay ; be it so ; 
you say that you cannot lay a direct tax to pay the interest 
on these bonds ; that it is a time of universal and unparal- 



8 

leled distress in your country ; that the people of the dehn- 
quent States have land, have wheat, have everything, but 
money ; be it so ; but yet say something to us ; say that you 
mean to pay ; that will satisfy us for the present ; that will 
relieve the panic which is sweeping down us and our fam- 
ilies by hundreds, to poverty and misery.' Why did not 
the^State authorities in question, meet this call ? Why do 
they not meet it now ? We ask this question with un- 
speakable concern and pain. We can conceive of no 
answer to it that ought to satisfy anybody. It must be 
want of care, of courage, or of principle. That it sliould 
be want of principle ; that our pubhc functionaries are 
willing violaters of their plighted faith, sworn oath-breakers, 
we choose to consider and we do consider impossible. A 
carelessness, we conceive ; a feeling of not being responsi- 
ble, too apt to be the feeling of public men in distinction 
from that of private men, and increased here by constant 
rotation in office ; the feeling, in short, which says, ' / did 
not borrow this money, and I am no more responsible in 
regard to it than every man around me ; ' all this may be 
the explanation, in part, of this great neglect, as it seems 
to us, of public duty. It is very well known that, in Eng- 
land, as well as in America, successive administrations do 
not feel responsible for the acts of the last, as if they were 
their own. It is very easy to see that if our States had, 
each of them, a permanent head, a prince or king, the 
sense of responsibility, in such a crisis, would be far more 
binding. 

Still we must confess that this reasoning, though it may 
explain something, is, in such a case by no means satisfac- 
tory. But is this enough even to explain the case ? Must 
there be something more ? Can it be that our State author- 
ities have distrusted the honesty of the people, have doubted 
whether in the simple admission that the debt is binding, 
they would be supported by public sentiment, have feared, 
that if they spoke the honest word, they should lose their 
dishonest places ? Then before Heaven do we say it, we 
believe, that they do not know the people whom they 
canvass ! It is not true that the people of this country, if 
the honest part were truly placed before them, would reject 
it. It cannot, it shall not, it must not, be true. In strict 
faith and conscience, we believe it is not. If we thought 



it were, if we ever were brought to that terrible conckision, 
if we beheved this nation to be a false and dishonest nation, 
we should fold our arms in despair ; we should lift our eyes 
to heaven and say, ' God ! give us another country ! We 
have no country ; give us some far land, some distant shore, 
where faith is kept and truth abides ; for we have no more 
a country ! ' We trust we shall be believed when we say, 
that this is no language of rhetoric. It has been lately 
said in a printed letter, that " Indiana will certainly repu- 
diate." We do not believe it. But if it were true, hope- 
lessly true, and if we were a citizen of Indiana, we would 
leave that State without delay. We would not breathe its 
air one moment beyond the time that we had power to 
leave it. 

We can believe that this is a subject on which the public 
conscience is not yet sufficiently aroused, without losing 
our confidence in the people. We can believe that the 
public mind is, to some degree, sophisticated, on this sub- 
ject. There have been some novel speculations spread 
among the people, designed to show that governments have 
no right to contract debts ; that the present generation has 
no right to bind the future ; and much has been made in 
Europe of the circumstance, that one of the public func- 
tionaries of the State of New York has lent his counte- 
nance to such a doctrine ; a doctrine, which, whether true 
or false, becomes, at any rate, dishonest, the moment it is 
made to apply to debts already contracted. There is a 
feeling, too, among the people that these debts have been 
rashly contracted ; that the public works on which these 
loans have been expended, are of little or no service to 
them ; that millions have been thrown away upon useless 
canals, and that it is hard they should now be heavily 
taxed for these bootless enterprises. Add to th'is, the gen- 
•eral feeling of irresponsibleness for what the Government 
does ; and it is easy to see in what a different light tliis case 
may present itself, from that of direct personal liability. 

It is not strange, perhaps, that the creditor in Europe 
does not, or will not, see this difference. He addresses the 
State that is indebted to him — Pennsylvania, for instance 
— just as if it were a private individual.* He says, ' You 

*See the Letters of the Reverend Sydney Smith. 



10 

can pay ; you are rich at this moment ; you can pay ; you 
will not pay ; you are revelling in " the luxury of dishon- 
esty ; " you never will pay.' He feels disposed, if he meets 
a Pennsylvanian at dinner in London, to seize upon him, 
strip him, and in a sort of symbolical retaliation to divide 
his apparel among the guests ; his coat to one, his boots to 
another, and his watch to a third. — If any body wants the 
benefit of this lash, let them have it. If this irony can do 
any good, let it, in Heaven's name ! But still, we must 
say, that it is more amusing than reasonable. Suppose the 
Affghan people should retort in this way upon the Reverend 
satirist — could they catch him — because his Government 
had done them some harm. Suppose the Chinese should 
smother him in a chest of opium, because his people per- 
sisted in smuggling the article into their country. Nay, and 
we cannot quite admire the taste with which these English 
writers come forth to teach and reprimand this country — 
something as if they had birch in hand for this great republi- 
can boy on the other side of the water. But to be serious ; 
is all this wise or just ? Multitudes in Pennsylvania, and in 
all the indebted States, are most anxious that this matter 
should be fairly adjusted. But they find that this cannot 
be done in a moment. A whole people must be aroused 
to the payment of a government debt. Such a thing was 
never done before in the world ; and we doubt whether it 
can be done anywhere else. We doubt whether the 
public debt of England would stand the tide of universal 
suffrage a single day. Be that as it may ; here is a Penn- 
sylvanian — let us suppose — laboring and hoping and be- 
lieving that all may be brought right. In the meantime 
would the Reverend accuser have him eaten up at a 
dinner in London ? We cannot sympathize with his wit. 
With us it a matter too great and grave to raise a laugh 
about. We are sorry for his anger too ; for it has cer- 
tainly cost him sixty per cent on his investment. He says 
he has sold his stock at forty per cent. He says it, as if 
he had washed his hands of it. " Haste makes waste." 
If he had waited a little, he might have had a hundred. 

At the same time, we freely say that to any, not petulant 
but calm and solemn remonstrance of this gentleman, whose 
talent we admire, whose writings we delight in, we would 
give all the aid in our humble power. We do not regret 



11 

that he should use his powerful pen to awaken the public con- 
science in this country. We would that many pens should 
be employed in this cause. Yes, and with all our heart, let 
them point to that magnificent State of Pennsylvania, — 
key-state she is called ; key-state she is ; and never did 
more depend on her than now ! There is a voice from 
her western border which has thrilled through the hearts of 
thousands — the noble manifesto of the Pittsburg "Frank- 
lin Association." Honor and success to it ! Let the cap- 
ital answer to that voice ! Let the river echo to the 
mountains, that great motto — " Franklin and Honesty !" 
We would indeed there were public meetings called in 
all our cities to consider this solemn crisis in our national 
morals, to pour out eloquent indignation upon the bare 
thought of public delinquency ; to do all that is possible to 
wipe off the dishonor that is cast upon us in the face of 
all Europe ! 

There is, in fact, an effort to be made in this country, of 
which we think our people are not yet fully aware. This 
matter of our public indebtedness must not be left to take 
care of itself. The country must be aroused. It must 
come to be distinctly understood, that here is no ordinary 
work to be done. A whole people must be brought to 
feel the obligation of a public engagement. We have 
assigned some reasons to show why this does not come 
home to the private and individual conscience. But it 
must be brought home there. Our only help lies in indi- 
vidual conviction. Every merchant, every mechanic, every 
farmer must be made to feel that this obligation presses 
hke a private debt, upon his ware-house, his work- 
shop, his land. The truth is, a new kind of national 
conscience is to be called into being here. The people of 
these States, paying immense debts, which press upon them 
in the form of government loans, paying them by a volun- 
tary effort, as they will do, will present a moral spectacle 
never before seen in the world. The principle that will 
do this, lies, we firmly believe, in the heart of these com- 
munities ; but it is to be quickened into hfe and roused 
into action. And this must be done. We must not 
admit nor consent that anything else is possible. Shall the 
blight of bad faith be upon our fields and streams and 
mountains, as an everlasting curse and shame ? Shall this 



12 

canker be suffered to remain in the very root of all our 
prosperity and hope ? Shall this terrible precedent stand 
in the national history of millions of free, prosperous and 
intelligent people ? Shall this be the heritage of dishonor 
that is to go down from us to our posterity ? And shall 
the nations as they pass by our borders say, ' Aha ! these 
are the people that talked of liberty and justice and human 
rights ; but they never paid their debts ! ' Heaven forbid ! 
We neither admit nor consent, nor believe that this is pos- 
sible ! 

The second charge brought against us, is that of an 
excessive and demorahzing love and pursuit of gain. 

To meet the full extent of the distrust that is felt of this 
country and of its institutions on pecuniary grounds, it is 
necessary to take a larger view, than that of temporary 
repudiation. There are other accusations connected with 
this larger view. It is said that the entire national mind of 
this country is corrupted by the pursuit of wealth ; that in 
the absence of hereditary distinctions, this is the main 
title to consideration among us, and that to gain it, has 
become the one passion of our people ; that from this cause 
has come in a flood of bankruptcies, failures, frauds ; that 
we have become the most dishonest people in the world ; 
and in fine, that our great political experiment is wrecked 
upon a rock of gold ; — or rather, of what we thought was 
gold, but which has turned out to be no better than worth- 
less slate. 

Let us observe in passing, that the failure of the United 
States Bank, being, as it was strictly after the withdrawal of 
the national charter, a private corporation, no more involves 
the moral credit of our people, than the failure of a bank 
at Leeds or Manchester, does that of the English people. 
But let us proceed to the general allegation. 

That, as a people at large, we are a money-seeking peo- 
ple beyond all others, we do not deny. That the pursuit 
of property carries us too far, and is the cause of many 
mistakes and evils among us, we do not deny. But with 
regard to the opprobrium attached to this national trait, we 
must ask for some candid reflection. 

It must be remembered then, that there never was a 
people to whom the paths of acquisition were so widely 
opened as the people of this country. In Europe, entail 



13 

on the land and capital in the manufactories, hold the mass 
of property from general possession. The laboring classes, 
generally, are tenants at will, or toilers for a bare subsist- 
ence. To have a competence, an independence however 
humble, is a thing entirely beyond their reach and thought. 
In this country, this boon, or the hope of it at least, is 
held out to all. Can it be expected that any people will 
be indifferent to such a blessing ? We are not surprised 
that the first developement of the unobstructed free prin- 
ciple, is the eager pursuit of property. Noble ones are 
to follow, are following already ; but it was natural, it 
was inevitable, that this should be the first. A man were 
a fool, and not a rational being, if, when the chance is 
offered him of providing for his own declining days or 
for the future wants of his family, he should fold his hands 
in transcendental wisdom or plebeian stupidity, and say that 
he did not care for property. 

Nor do we admit all that is charged, of bad consequences 
from the pursuit of worldly goods. We will come in a 
moment to our late commercial disasters. But first we 
deny in general, that the common possession of this great 
heritage of opportunity, has had the effect alleged, to vul- 
garize, degrade and corrupt tlie public mind. This wide 
diffusion of property tends to make a generous people. 
We certainly are not a hoarding people. Our expenditures 
are free enough in all conscience, we need not say ; but 
we must say, since we are put upon this ungrateful argu- 
ment, that our charities too are free. And we wish that 
our British accusers, in particular, would think now and 
then, amidst their reproaches, of the thousands and ten 
thousands of their own poor, whom we annually relieve. 
They come in shoals every week, every day, to our shores ; 
sometimes, we are told, actually shipped off from the alms- 
houses of England in utter helplessness by the public 
authorities ; they crowd our own alms-houses ; they besiege 
our doors in all the cities of our sea-board ; and we verily 
believe that, in the long run, we are to give to the poor of 
Great Britain more than the amount of all the debts we 
owe her ! We can do it ; and a good many things more ; 
and pay the debt besides ; and shall — such is our assured 
faith. 

2 



14 

But again, we doubt whether the eagerness for gain, 
though circumstances have made it more general here, is, 
by any means, so intense as it is in the higher circles of 
Europe. There is nothing here to compare with the rigid 
grasp of entail ; with the inhumanity, the unnatural cruelty 
and injustice, that looks around upon a circle of children 
alike loving and entitled to love, and says, ' penniless shall 
ye all be, but this, my eldest ; dependent shall ye all 
be upon him ; in order that our family may be great.' 
They say that we have no birth-distinctions here to honor. 
But how long will the birth-distinction last without the 
wealth-distinction ? The law of primogeniture answers. 
No, no ; the great name must be graven on a plate of gold, 
or it will wear out. The possessors of rank will not be the 
men to set a light value upon the wealth that sustains it. 

This close alliance, too, must give wealth, with the mass 
of the people, increased influence and power. And we 
verily believe, strange as the assertion may be thought, that 
opulence is a surer title to respect in Europe tiian it is in 
America. Beside its assotiation with rank, it is a rarer 
thing there, than it is here. And from both causes, it can 
surround itself with homages there, which here it would 
seek for in vain. We are cei'tain, that the poor man in 
America stands a better chance of receiving the considera- 
tion and respect that are due to him, than in Europe. The 
Old world is full of arrangements that visibly assign to him 
an humbler place and accommodation. The forward deck 
of steamboats is for him ; the second class of railroad cars : 
the humble fiacre or citadiiie in the cities ; nay, the very 
streets tell the same tale. Till recently, in the cities of 
Europe the streets had no side-walks. But fifteen years 
ago, large quarters in Paris did not possess one side-walk. 
And the language of all this was as plain, as if the words 
had been formed in the very paving-stones ; ' these streets 
were built solely for the convenience of the rich who ride 
in carriages, and not for the poor who walk.' Yes, and 
the rapid increase of side-walks in tiie cities as plainly pro- 
claims the onward march of more just and liberal princi- 
ples. The barricades in Paris did not tell a plainer tale. 

But let us come to the season of our late commercial 
disasters. This, in the view of many foreign observers, has 
plunged the moral and political hope of the country into 



15 

utter ruin. Let us look at the case. In a thriving country, 
of vast and unexplored resources, amidst an enterprising 
population, to whose whole mass were opened the courses 
of boundless competition, there grew up gradually, from 
various causes, an honest conviction of the increased value 
of all property. We were living in a new age, in a new 
world, amidst new and untried fortunes ; prosperity, such 
as the world perhaps had never known , was pouring its 
treasures into the lap of peace ; human intelligence, as- 
piration, hope, were lifting their wings for an unbounded 
flight ; mechanism, more than realizing the fabled stories 
of giants and Titans, seemed about to break through the 
iron barriers of necessity, and to open the regions of 
some fairer and happier state of being. There were dis- 
tinct causes, no doubt, of the wild speculations of 1835 
and 1836, but we believe that the excited spirit of the age 
lent them a powerful impulse. At any rate, the impulse 
became general, became universal. We well remember 
how sage and cautious men held out against it for a time. 
We remember too, how one after another fell in with it ; till 
at length all yielded to the tide of opinion, and were gazing 
unconcerned, if not actually swimming upon this vast and 
tremendous Maelstrom. Speculation became, in fact, a 
part of the regular and accredited business of the country. 
It was not like the mania about the South sea and Missis- 
sippi stocks ; it was not the scheme of a few ; it did not wear 
an air of romance or phrenzy, which might well have put 
the prudent upon their guard ; it was the trade and traffic 
of the many. People honestly said, ' we had not appre- 
ciated the value of our property ; our houses, our lots and 
lands are, and are to be, worth more than we had thought ; 
how much we know not.' Suppose, then, multitudes to have 
become honestly possessed with the convictiorl that they 
could make immense fortunes in a few years ; and see the 
unprecedented force of the temptation. The fact is, that 
no community on earth was ever subjected to anything like 
the same trial. Is it strange that many sunk under it ; that 
the sound old maxims of prudence were considered as 
superseded and to be laid aside ; that men took risks first, 
then involved themselves in embarrassments ; and that 
many, at last, fell into positive frauds ? There have been 
sad failures on every side ; not received with dishonest non- 



16 

chalance, as our foreign traducers represent ; they little 
know the honorable minds to which they do this wrong. 
And there have been gigantic frauds, which have struck 
the heart of the whole community with salutary horror. 
All this we admit. But when we hear it said, ' the great 
republican experiment has failed ; ' we answer, no ; some 
banks, some houses, some individuals have failed, but the 
country has not failed, the experiment has not failed ; the 
heart of the people is sound. In fact, when we speak of 
the whole community as engaged in the late hazardous 
courses of business, we speak, after all, only of the trading 
classes ; the people at large, knew nothing about it. The 
body of farmers and mechanics was absolutely untouched 
by it. And we aver and we know, concerning our 
people at large, and that too from some minute knowl- 
edge and extensive comparison, that there is not a more 
honest and virtuous people on earth. We might say more ; 
for there is nothing among our people, to compare with the 
small, paltry, perpetual deception, knavery and lying that 
one finds everywhere on the continent of Europe. We 
might say more then ; but thus much at least, will we say ; 
for while on the one hand, we have no taste for flattery, 
on the other, we will not give up our people to unjust 
reproach. Conceit may be bad, but discouragement is 
scarcely less so ; to submit passively to opprobrium is to go 
half-way towards deserving it ; and at any rate, what we 
desire in the case, is absolute truth and justice — no more 
and no less. 

The third grave charge against American morals is 
fixed upon the system of Slavery. 

Let the charge be precisely stated. It is not that we 
now import slaves, or suffer them to be imported. We 
have declared the trade to be piracy ; and were the first 
nation in the world to do so. The charge is, that a body 
of the unfortunate African race formerly introduced into 
this country, and which has come by inheritance into the 
hands of the present generation, is still held in bondage. 
It is an involuntary possession. It was not sought by those 
in whom the title now vests ; it is not desired by the most 
of them ; it was entailed upon them. And the substantive 
matter of the accusation is, that they do not emancipate 
this class immediately. Gradual emancipation has been 



17 

going on in this country from the moment that it was freed 
from its connection with Great Britain. Up to the time of 
the AboUtion excitement, the discussion of such reUef was 
freely entertained from one end of the country to the other. 
Let the reader remember the debates in the Virginia Legis- 
lature after the Southampton massacre, the language of Jef- 
ferson himself on this subject, and the conversations he must 
have held with the Southern planters, if he has taken any 
pains to converse with them. The charge is not, that the 
body of our citizens even in the slave States, approve of this 
system in the abstract ; not that they would now establish it ; 
but that they permit its existence at all, that they do not break 
it up immediately ; or with regard to the Northern States, it 
is that they are slumbering in criminal apathy over this tre- 
mendous evil and wrong. In one word, the charge is, that the 
national conscience is far behind that of other civilized coun- 
tries. For it is not our present business to maintain that 
we are better than other nations, but to show that no 
grand demoralization has taken place under our Repub- 
lican forms. This is what is now alleged in Europe, and 
this is what we deny. 

We had prepared ourselves to make a somewhat full 
statement of our views of the entire Slavery question ; but 
we refrain from doing so at present, for two reasons. The 
first is, that it would swell this article beyond due bounds. 
And the second is, that we are unwilling on reflection to 
discuss the subject at large from the particular point of 
view at which we now stand. It places us in a false posi- 
tion with reference to our own sentiments. From some 
experience we have found, that everything we say, with a 
to view the defence of the national morality on this subject, 
is seen in a false light. We are looked upon as apologists 
for Slavery : a thing we can never permit. 

We must content ourselves at present, therefore, with 
some remarks on the state of feeling existing in this country, 
and the judgment formed of it abroad. Are we then to say, 
in the first place, that this feeling is altogether right, that the 
public conscience is elevated or quickened to the desirable 
point ? It would be idle and foolish and immoral to say it. 
We suppose the people of this country, and especially the 
parties interested, feel very much as the people of England 
or France would, as all people will at first, in a case where 
2* 



18 

immense interests are involved, where old habitudes and 
prejudices are called in question, and where selfish passions 
are aroused by earnest discussion. And here we must still 
desire the reader to observe our point of view, and not to 
misconstrue us. Absolutely speaking, we can have no wish 
but to raise the public character and conscience among us, to 
the highest elevation possible. In this view, it is nothing to 
us that other nations fail ; we will spread no such shield 
over our errors. But when it is said, that our free insti- 
tutions have depraved the national character, have made us 
a selfish and reckless people, have made us worse than any 
other people, it is to the purpose, and it is but justice to the 
great liberal cause, to deny the charge. We are willing 
that other nations should exact of us more than they 
demand of themselves, if they please ; but when the exac- 
tion is brought into this kind of argument, we think it is 
unfair. We freely say, that we are not satisfied with the 
feeling that exists in this country with regard to the stu- 
pendous immorality of the slave-system, but we must 
equally deny that it indicates any extraordinary degen- 
eracy. 

But, in the next place, what is the feeling in fact ? The 
Northern States have always been opposed to Slavery ; they 
have manumitted all their slaves long ago ; they are over- 
spread with Abolition Societies at this moment ; and the 
writings of Channing and others, have drawn universal 
attention and stirred the universal conscience. Does all 
this look like apathy ? But then it is said, that many 
people at the North have been exasperated by the Abolition 
movement. But we ask, — could this be, because they are 
opposed to abolition ? Why, they have abolished slavery 
themselves ! The truth is, they tiiought this movement 
dangerous to the peace of tiie country, to the union of the 
States. And then they did not like the manner and tone 
of the Abolitionists. They could not help their dislike 
perhaps ; but they ought, we think, to have been more con- 
siderate than they were. They ought to have respected the 
pure and gentle, the courageous and self-sacrificing spirit of 
a man like Follen, and of others hke him; and we believe they 
did. But at any rate their dislike of the Abolitionists was not 
a hostility to abolition. The hopeful idea has always been 
entertained in New England, that the emancipation of 



19 

which itself had set the example, would gradually spread 
itself over the South, till not one human creature in these 
States should be held in bondage. Then again, with 
regard to the feeling entertained at the South, we must 
believe that much injustice has been done to it. There are 
those, it is true, who defend the slave-system in its very 
principle, and maintain that it ought to be permanent. 
But we believe they are few. Many of the planters, we 
know, feel their situation to be a painful and irksome one, 
and would gladly be rid of it. But what should they have 
done? They saw, as they aver, that manumission, with them, 
did the colored man no good ; that he was a worse man, 
and worse oft' for his freedom. They felt, too, that their 
characters were assailed with rude and cruel severity, and 
they were naturally indignant. This was set down, at 
once, to Southern pride and selfishness and inhumanity ; . 
but was it just ? We have known the Southern people, as 
generous and hospitable and kind-hearted and courteous to 
a proverb ; no people in the world more so ; was it right to 
heap upon them unmeasured opprobrium and indignity, 
instead of approaching them as brethren, with kind and 
respectful reasoning ; instead of mildly asking them what 
ought to be, and what could be done ? 

And indeed, what is to be done ? This we say, in the 
third place, is the great question ; and it is a difiicult ques- 
tion ; it is environed with difficulties. The way out of 
these difficulties is not so plain that a good conscience 
must needs see it at once and feel no hesitation. The 
example of West India emancipation has indeed relieved 
some doubts. The docility, the gratitude, the joy of the 
colored people there, and their willingness quietly to enter 
into new social relations, to work as freemen upon the 
fields which they had tilled as slaves, presented a beautiful 
and touching spectacle ; and we rejoice at it ; we thank 
God for it. But yet, is West India emancipation an ex- 
ample for us ? The colored race, with us, must ever be 
a small and depressed minority. They can never be the 
dominant class, as in the West Indies. Scattered among 
us and yet separated from us by impassable physical, if not 
mental barriers ; refused intermarriage, refused intercourse 
as equals, be it ever so unjustly ; how are they ever to rise ? 
How are they to enjoy any fair chance as men ? We are 



to 

disposed to ask for them an ampler measure of relief than 
mere emancipation. And yet how they are to get it, 
except in entire removal from the country, we see not. 
Force, for this purpose, is out of the question ; but we have 
thought that, if, being emancipated, they should see it to be 
for their advantage to retire to Hayti or the West Indies, it 
would be fortunate for them ; it would be the only situa- 
tion in which they could rise to their proper place as men. 
And we have doubted whether emancipation in this country, 
either at the North or South, has done them any good. 
The instances that have fallen under our particular and 
personal observation, go to prove the contrary. We have 
known communities of them, where fifty years of freedom 
have left them worse and worse off for it. We do not say, 
that they were less happy ; for we think that freedom is a 
boon that may compensate for the loss of almost everything 
beside. At the same time we hear that there are far more 
favorable instances than those we have examined. We 
are told, that in the cities of New York and Philadelphia 
there are communities of regular, orderly and industrious 
colored people, who have their churches, their schools, their 
charitable institutions, and among whom are far fewer poor 
and wretched than among the Irish emigrants. They are 
said to have improved very much within the last ten years. 
Something of this we have suspected ; and it has occurred 
to us that the demonstration of friendship given in the 
visible array of the Abolition movement, may have been of 
great service to them. 

The question before us, we say, is one of momentous 
concern, and fraught with difficulty and danger. It were a 
comparatively easy thing to vote twenty millions, or a hun- 
dred millions, to free slaves in a distant island. And we verily 
believe that our difficulties would be less, if all the States 
were slave States. Then we should have one common 
interest. Then we might go together. Now there is a 
perilous altercation between the North and the South. To 
our apprehension it endangers the Union. Foreigners can 
feel little concern about it, compared with what we feel : 
and they may use a rough and violent language on this 
subject, which it would not be our wisdom to imitate. 

On the whole, we think it must be apparent that this is 
a subject to be treated with the utmost care and con- 



21 

sideration, with the utmost Christian seriousness and mod- 
eration. We are accused abroad of a base and criminal 
apathy upon it. Who of us may deserve this charge 
we know not, but we do know many who have stood 
aloof from the Abolition movement, in application to whom 
it would be utterly and cruelly false. From our youth up, 
we have known the fact to be far otherwise. Twenty-five 
years ago — long before any Abolition Society was heard of 
— we knew of a private Association of gentlemen formed 
for the investigation of this subject.* Often and often have 
we known this matter to be discussed, as the most fatal evil 
and peril of the country ; discussed at the North with 
solemn deliberation, and at the South with anxieties and 
tears even, which should have won a consideration far dif- 
ferent from this coarse and ferocious abuse. 

It has been proclaimed abroad that our pulpit dares not 
speak out on this subject ; that many of our clergy are Abo- 
litionists, but have not the courage to confess it. We 
repel the charge with indignation. Our clergy generally, 
though of course opposed to Slavery, are not Abolitionists. 
Nay, and we have discussed the subject of Slavery less fre- 
quently than we otherwise might have done, because we saw, 
or thought we saw, that the discussion was taking a danger- 
ous turn. Foreigners can strike in freely among us ; the 
blow does not hurt them ; they care little for our dissen- 
tions and our perils ; but ive, with their leave, must look a 
little more carefully after these matters. It is always found 
that one's neighbors can speak much more freely of his 
family than he can himself. They understand but little of 
the difficulty and delicacy of his situation. We say plainly, 
that we do not like the tone of English criticism upon us.f 

* The writer of this article was a membor of this Association. 

t We do not descend so low in this allusion as to a late article, run 
mad with the rage for abuse, in the last London Foreign (Quarterly Re- 
view. Nor do we refer now to its criticism on our poets. But the first 
few pages contain an attack upon this country of such unmeasured injus- 
tice, tiiat we can find no words wherewith adequately to speak ot it. 
We are sometimes tempted to ask, is there something coarse and brutal 
in the English civilization ? But we check ourselves. We have seen the 
homes of England, and never and nowhere on earth do we expect to find 
more refinement, courtesy and liospitaJity than we have seen there. And 
we trust the higher mind of that country to rebuke, as they deserve, such 
insane ebullitions, when occupying any loftier place than the vilest news- 
paper, or the lowest gin-shop. 



We have seen more than one rougli and reckless comment 
upon our soberest writers on pohtics, hke Channing and 
Story. They are considered as timid and time-serving. 
We recollect that in one of the leading Reviews, Channing 
was represented — the high-hearted and intrepid Channing 
— as " bowing and kissing hands to the public all round ! " 
Nay, even on the subject of Slavery, he was too prudent for 
some. The celebrated John Foster said, when reading one 
of his powerful Essays, "it is very fine, but rather too 
much like a razor." He wanted that the American cham- 
pion should strike with a club. The fact is, people abroad 
look with a sort of speculative and curious feeling upon 
our discussions. They like to see the Democratic principle, 
as they consider it, carried out to the fullest extent, as it is in 
the former writings of Brownson, and of others young and 
rash as he was. That pleases them, amuses them. But we 
have something else to do in this. country, besides pleasing 
or amusing anybody. We must be sober, if we would be 
wise men. We have many things to consider, that are out 
of the reach of trans-Atlantic eyes. We have many inter- 
ests to take into the account, many powers and tendencies 
to hold in a careful balance. God forbid that we should 
set anything above the sovereign, solemn, eternal truth ! 
But beneath that truth we must walk reverently, soberly, 
humbly. 

We have now considered the three heaviest charges that 
are brought against our national morality ; repudiation, the 
spirit of gain, and slavery. We might proceed to say some- 
thing, if we had space, of certain disorders, private broils and 
violations of law, under the name of Lynch Law, which char- 
acterize the state of society in the far West. There is a 
certain border-land between civilization and barbarism, 
where personal vindication, and lawless defence of society 
against thieves and gamblers, sometimes take place of the 
regular administration of public justice. We have no 
defence whatever to make of these usages. We have only 
to say, that they are less remarkable and portentous than 
they appear to European eyes ; especially when it is con- 
sidered that these are continually exhibited in newspaper 
paragraphs, instead of the general order of society which pre- 
vails in that part of the country. But the important observa- 
tion to be made is, that this border land is constantly retreat- 



23 

ing before the advances of settled law and order. If it were 
otherwise, if this border were coming Eastward, if Lynch 
law and the bowie knife were gaining upon us, it were an 
invasion to be looked upon with unmitigated horror. But 
the truth is, that they are constantly driven back and are 
fast retreating to " their own place," the wild domain of 
savage life. 

After all, we are not sure but the great offence of this coun- 
try lies in what is called " a Democratic levelling of all dis- 
tinctions," and in what is represented as " a consequent gen- 
eral vulgarity of mind and manners." Strangely enough Mr. 
Dickens has especially taken it to heart, to make this impres- 
sion upon the people of England and upon his readers all over 
Europe. We do not say that he was obliged to think well of 
us, because we thought well of him and received him kindly. 
He had delighted the people of this country with his pic- 
tures of life and manners ; he had provided them with 
what, amidst their too serious and engrossing cares, they 
very much wanted — a great deal of harmless amusement ; 
he had won them by the broad and beautiful seal of hu- 
manity that is set upon his genius ; and they paid him a 
homage which no other people on earth could pay. It was 
really a most extraordinary demonstration, creditable to 
both parties, indicative of great intellectual power on the 
one side, and of no mean share of intelligence on the 
other : and out of this bare fact of Mr. Dickens's reception, 
doing him more justice than he does himself, we could 
frame an argument good against more than half he says 
of America. We confess, under all the circumstances of the 
case, that we were never more at loss to account for any 
state of mind than for this bitterness towards America, of 
the popular novelist. It will not do for him to say that he 
is a fiction-writer and somewhat of a caricaturist. When 
he draws pictures of disgusting meanness and vulgarity at 
home, he lets the reader plainly understand that they be- 
long to the lowest life in England. But he presents to the 
English and European public, pictures of a vulgarity which 
nobody ever saw or heard or conceived of in America, and 
when they walk out of the frame, lo ! they are merchants 
of New York, Generals and landed proprietors in the 
West, persons holding respectable positions in society. 
This is no play of fiction. Speaking in his own person, he 



24 

permits himself, amidst a strain of almost insane vitupera- 
tion, to use language like this concerning America: "that 
Republic," he says, " but yesterday let loose upon her 
noble course, and but to-day so maimed and lame, so full 
of sores and ulcers, foul to the eye and almost hopeless (?) 
to the sense, that her best friends turn from the loathsome 
creature with disgust." ! ! We grieve to say, that the dis- 
gust inspired by this passage must turn, we fear, upon the 
writer of it. Mr. Dickens might be reminded that there are 
other vehicles for scurrility, as it would seem, besides news- 
papers. We challenge him to find in the lowest of our 
public prints any language concerning any civilized people 
on earth, to compare with the passage we have just quoted. 
Can it be a respectable thing in England, to treat a nation 
with such indignity as this ? We believe not. The angry 
novelist, as we have reason to know, is doing himself more 
hurt at home, even than abroad. 

But there is nevertheless a state of opinion in England to 
which this general representation addresses itself It is doubt- 
less believed by many that the people in this country are, in 
the mass, a knavish, mean and vulgar people ; that we are a 
people of infinite pretension and very little performance ; 
that our intelligence is cunning, our virtue wordy talk, and 
our religion fanaticism ; in short that our Democratic in- 
stitutions are fast breaking down all reverence, nobleness 
and true culture among our people. From the high places 
of society in England, they cast down scorn upon this 
poor Republic, wallowing in the mire and filth of boundless 
hcense and vulgarity ! * 

We are somewhat tempted to take that bull, John Bull, 
by the horns in this matter, though we should be gored by 
him. Nobility against Democracy then — be it so. We 
are ready to maintain that Democracy is yielding nobler 
results. We will not direct attention to the misery of the 
lower classes in that country ; but we point directly to the 
higher classes. We say that much of that misery is owing 
to them. We say that they do not now, and that they never 
did, their duty to the people of England. We say that 
they have never made any contribution, proportionable to 
their advantages, to the wealth, improvement, learning, 

* See Lord Sydenham's Letter. 



25 

literature, or even to the statesmanship of England. 
Were not their ranks continually recruited from the com- 
monalty, they would have more than half died and ceased 
out of the land by this time. Their position is essentially 
a false and wrong position for human beings to occupy. 
Nay, their feeble hands cannot hold the very property that 
is committed to them. Were it not lashed on to them by 
entail, it would be scattered during the life-time of the 
present generation. At this very moment, more than half 
of the great landed estates of England are under mort- 
gage. 

We say moreover, that their position is one totally 
unjust and infinitely ungenerous to the rest of the people. 
They have a most unfair start in the race of life. There is 
no generous boy in any country, that would not disdain 
such an advantage. Suppose that such a boy were sent to 
any public school : and that the master, patting him on the 
head, should say to him, ' I know where you came from, 
my dear ; you are the son of such or such an one ; now do 
not trouble yourself about the tasks, my boy ; though you 
do not work half so hard as the others, you shall have more 
marks than any of them ; and when you run races witii them, 
you shall always have two rods the start ; so you shall be a 
grand boy in the school any way.' Now what would any 
spirited and generous boy say of this ? With bursting 
tears of indignation, we should expect him to say, ' I do not 
want to be treated so ; I do not want any advantage ; let 
me take my chance with the rest.' The peerage is the 
great baby-nursery of England ; and all the land is taxed 
and tasked to keep it warm and comfortable — especially 
for the oldest boy : and when the younger ones run out, 
instantly coats and cloaks — to wit, army and navy uni- 
forms, cassocks, good secretaryships, appointments, — are 
provided for them by the kind and nursing public. 

The good people of England especially admire this insti- 
tution, and it is our especial marvel that they do. We 
cannot help thinking that many a noble lord laughs in his 
sleeve at it. Our own feeling is, that the people in that 
country are not elevated, but degraded by this worship of 
the aristocracy. We remember once asking in a company 
of intelligent and cultivated persons in England, whether 
there was anybody, any man in the country, who on being 
3 



26 

invited by the Lord of a neighboring castle to visit him and 
spend a week in hunting with his Lordship, would not feel 
— and that too whether his Lordship was wise or simple, 
bad or good — would not feel, we say, sensibly gratified 
and very highly honored. With a shout of laughter at 
our simplicity, they all answered, " No, there is no such 
man in England ! " 

Give us then, we say, the chance for the noblest develop- 
ment of all human faculties and affections, that is found in 
our generous freedom, with all its faults, rather than that 
which is offered in the title-worshipping land of Britain ! 

In connection with our morality, we wish to say a word or 
two, in passing, of our religion. There is a total miscon- 
ception in Europe on this subject. We have no established 
Church and no ecclesiastical revenue, and it is inferred 
that we have no religion. Dr. Chalmers, some years ago, 
came out in London with a series of lectures on the Vol- 
untary System, and much did he delight the members of 
the Establishment by proving, as they supposed, that religion 
cannot be left to take care of itself, that it is not in this, as 
in worldly matters, that demand will procure supply. We 
should like to know what he thinks of it now, since one of 
the noblest voluntary contributions has been made that ever 
the world saw, to support him and the free churches of his 
new communion in breaking off from the Establishment. Be 
this as it may ; here in America, is a perfect illustration of 
the permanent working of the voluntary principle. Here 
is a country without either establishment or endowment or 
revenue, or compulsion of any sort to support religion. 
And what do we see ? More Divinity Schools are estab- 
lished here, more churches are builded, and larger salaries, 
to the body of the clergy, are paid in this country, than 
anywhere else in the world. Demand will not procure 
supply — the voluntary principle will not sustain religious 
institutions — is it said ? Look at the churches that are 
rising around us in every city in the Union — and not 
one stone laid in their foundations, but what the voluntary 
principle lays there. But this zeal is not confined to our 
cities. We took a journey three or four years since, across 
the hills of our own and a neighboring county in Massa- 
chusetts, and we must confess that we were equally sur- 
prised and delighted with what we saw. In the first town- 



27 

ship that we came to, they were building a new church, 
for the convenience of a half-parish two or three miles from 
the old church. In the second, they were painting their 
church, and had replaced the old steeple with a new one. 
We shall be permitted to be thus minute, because these are 
the simple facts. In a third township — all lying adjacent 
to each other — they had pulled down the old church, and 
built a new, commodious and tasteful structure in its stead. 
In a fourth, not far distant, we came out upon what seemed 
a church in the wilderness ; all surrounded by woods, with 
not a dwelling-house in sight. One other building there 
was, indeed, hard by it, and that was a new academy — 
with a bell that was ringing out its matin call to the pupils, 
and sounded like a convent bell amidst the solitudes of the 
Alps. Now, let a man travel over England, and where 
can he find anything like this ? Dr. Chalmers asks for a 
power that shall build churches and support their ministers. 
We point him to the voluntary principle. It does build 
churches here, and it does pay the clergy ; and it does 
everything else that we want done. At least it accom- 
plishes more than is done in any other country. England 
with all her ecclesiastical revenues, and all the power of 
her hierarchy, and all the wealth of her nobles, cannot 
build churches nor raise funds in her waste places, nay, nor 
in her thronged cities, to any such extent as is done here, 
simply by the voluntary principle. 

Passing from our morals and religion, we would say 
something, in the next place, of our manners. And we 
freely admit the high significance of this consideration. 
Manners really are, according to the old usages of language, 
matters of morality. Manners are the instant unfolding, 
out-flowing of a people's mind ; they are unpremeditated 
expressions of culture or coarseness, refinement or vulgarity, 
self-considering or self-forgetting, justice or injustice, kind- 
ness or coldness of heart ; they are as significant as charities 
or churches, as bankruptcies or battles. Show us a people 
whose manners are essentially bad — gross, coarse, ungen- 
tle and bad ; and we should give up the defence of it in as 
utter despair, as if it had neither priests nor altars, neither 
hospitals nor alms-houses. 

We hope to show by some simple discriminations, that 
we have no cause so to despair of ourselves as a people ; 



28 

whatever may be said by foreign tourists who scan our 
manners in a month, or study our domestic usages in a 
steamboat. And we offer one of these discriminations, by 
saying in the first place, that there are certain things, not 
attaching to us as a people, and yet found among us, which 
we freely give up to " the whips and scorns " of whosoever 
pleases to lay upon them the lash and the sting. 

The manners, for instance, of some of the members of our 
legislative assemblies — and must we say? of the highest — 
we give up ; we have not a word to say in defence or 
extenuation. This only will we say, that if there be men 
who have found their way into the legislature, rather than 
the wrestling-ring or the cock-pit — if there be such men 
who have given the lie, or lifted the hand and struck the 
vulgar blow, in the majestic halls of public debate — if 
there be such men, who are not made to feel the weight 
of that dishonor so long as they live, we do not know, and 
we do not wish to know, the people and the public senti- 
ment of this country. Ah ! if they could understand with 
what bitter and insupportable shame, every American, in 
every land, hangs his head when these things are mentioned, 
they might pardon something of the indignation with which 
we write. We would that our countrymen might be 
aroused to consider this matter most seriously ; and that 
when such a man presents himself before them for re-elec- 
tion, they would say to him, ' No, sir, we are seeking a 
statesman, not a pugilist.' 

Again ; the character of the newspaper press has been 
made the matter of heavy reproaches against us. It has 
been made the subject of elaborate articles in the foreign 
journals. We must think there has been some injustice, 
some want of discrimination in the case. From the innu- 
merable columns of the daily press, written in haste and 
weariness often, it might be expected that many objection- 
able passages could be selected, and when these are spread 
out side by side, it is easy to see that a false impression 
may be created. But still no observing and thoughtful 
man among us can help admitting, unless he be restrained 
by the sheerest cowardice, that the character of our news- 
papers deserves much of the reproach that is cast upon 
it. Many of their editors, we beheve, see and feel this as 
much as others. We have heard more than one of them 



29 

admit, that even the vexatious prosecutions for libel by one 
of our distinguished authors, have done good. If nothing 
of this sort were admitted, if the press stood up in its own 
defence, we should like to see it tried by its own testimony. 
Look at the party prints, for instance. What unprincipled, 
nefarious, outrageous, lying prints are they all, by the judg- 
ment of their opponents ! But we are afraid we must press 
this evidence a little farther ; into the barriers of the same 
party. Look at the rival prints of our cities. Within any 
period of a year or two, we know of one city at least, in 
which not one of them, nor one of their editors, escapes the 
charge of being malignant, base, indecent and reckless of 
all truth and principle. If this were bad taste only, it 
were bad enough ; but certainly it is something much 
worse. The truth is, printing has become almost as com- 
mon as talking ; and we have in it, therefore, almost all 
the freedom of talk, without the restraints of personal 
presence. It is, in some sort, like an anonymous letter ; 
always the most reckless and abusive of all writing, because 
of the veil that covers the attack. In short, we have come 
to a new era in printing. Newspaper freedom never before 
tried any people to the same extent ; the peril of it, has 
come upon us unsuspected ; we have fallen into the mis- 
takes incident to a new and untried state of things ; and 
we must look to the teachings of experience and to the 
corrective power of public sentiment, as they have helped 
us always and everywhere, to help us here. 

Much good satire has been expended upon a minor 
immorality of our manners, in defence of which we have 
nothing to say but this, — that we never saw the transgres- 
sion. What may be done in bar-rooms, in steamboats and 
railroad cars, we say not, we need not describe nor defend 
it ; these places are out-of-doors to many people. But 
speaking of what passes in-doors, and from thirty or forty 
years' observation of this country and from a pretty wide 
circle of intercourse, we say, taxing our memory to the 
utmost, that we never saw any person spit on a carpet or 
parlor-floor in America. Wherever the fault lies, there let the 
reprobation fall ; but to multitudes among us, this represen- 
tation of foreign tourists, as a general one, must be a matter 
of as unmixed surprise, as if they had said, that we keep 
3* 



30 

bears in our parlors, or settle our fire-side discussions with 
fisticuffs. 

With regard to our manners on the whole, while there 
is, doubtless, less of ease and polish than in the higher circles 
of Europe, where men live in and for society almost entirely, 
and less of a certain civility and kindliness than in the 
humbler classes abroad, educated for ages to deference and 
respect ; yet there is a self-respect among our people, and a 
delicacy and consideration of different classes in the treat- 
ment of one another, and a freedom from mannerism, from 
hackneyed and heartless forms — the devices of modern 
etiquette or the stereotypes of old precision — all of which 
we value, and value as the results of our better and jusler 
political condition. Manners are the mirror of a people's 
mind. And we believe that each class in this country, 
as compared with its respective class abroad, will be found 
from its relative position, to have manners more manly and 
sincere and more just, as between man and man ; the higher 
less assumption, the lower less sycophancy ; and the mid- 
dling classes decidedly more cultivation. 

We are far from anxious, however, to defend our man- 
ners in all points. We think it is easy to see that causes 
are at work, which for a time must have an unfavorable 
influence in this respect, while in the long run they 
are to elevate the character, and ultimately indeed the 
very manners of the people. The case of the nation per- 
haps may be illustrated by that of an individual. Compare 
a humble citizen of this country, rising into life and having 
nothing but his good heart and hand to help him, with the 
man of a similar class in Europe. There, he is a laborer, 
always to depend for work and life, for the very soil on 
which he labors, upon others ; a serf in Russia, a poor 
tenant in England. He is humble, civil, obsequious, 
quiet ; he bears in his whole manner and being the stamp 
of an inferiority, from which he never hopes to escape ; his 
very dress marks him out as a member of that class ; he 
never aspires to rise above it; he reads little, perhaps he 
cannot read at all ; he thinks little ; his ideas revolve in a 
narrow circle ; he agitates no questions of social prudence 
with his superiors ; he scarcely feels himself to be a man in 
their presence, and in the sense in which they are men ; 
he expects to die as he has lived, and his children are to 



31 

live as he died ; in fine, he is an orderly, decent, useful 
person, and from the high places of society they look down 
upon him with complacency, for with them he is never to 
come into competition. Now look at the humble man of 
America. He is a backwoods-man, if you please. He 
owns the soil he treads upon ; he pays neither rent nor 
tithes nor taxes, but by his own consent and that of his 
peers. He acknowledges no master ; he bows to no lord 
nor land-holder. All this may have an eftect, and, for a 
time, a bad effect upon his manners. He is free, fearless, 
uncourteous, reckless perhaps in his bearing ; he seems 
almost lawless : the experiment looks not well. The 
traveller from another country, accustomed to homage 
from this class, looks upon him with displeasure, perhaps 
with disgust. He speaks his mind too freely, he does not 
take oft' his hat with sufficient deference. Something rough 
and unamiable there is, perhaps, in his manner. He has 
not learned to vindicate himself in the right way. That 
which is struggling in his bosom, is not to be softened and 
humanized in a moment. O nature ! poor human nature ! 
— through errors and sorrows must thou work out thy wel- 
fare ; and the thoughtful and considerate must wait for thee 
a little. Wait then, we say, and look a little farther. 
Does not this man become in time a far more intelligent 
being than his fellow in Europe ; with a wider range of 
thought and culture ? Is he not more hopeful and strong- 
hearted ? Does he not strike his spade into the soil that is his 
own, with a more willing energy and a more cheerful hope ? 
Does not the light from the opening sky of his fortunes 
break clearer and stronger, into the cloud of strife and 
passion ? Yes, he rises. He rises in character, in culture, 
in dignity and influence. He takes a place in society as 
hopeless to his brother in the Old World as the possession 
of fiefs and earldoms. His children after him rise to the 
highest places in the land. 

This is a picture of the man in this country. This, in 
some sort, is a picture of the country. Is there a man on 
earth, with a human heart in his bosom, that does not 
rejoice in the spectacle ; that does not sympathize with the 
experiment ; that does not say, God speed it ? No, there is 
no man. But there are — and they are not a few — distorted 
from the shape and nobleness of men, who hate the experi- 



32 

ment, and wish it nothing but ill. Clothed in the robes of 
selfish grandeur, they would as soon think of taking their 
dogs into an equality with themselves, as of taking the 
mass of mankind. With this spirit is our quarrel. With 
this spirit is the quarrel of this country. And by all the 
hope of Christianity and faith in God, do we trust and 
believe that this country shall vindicate the great cause 
which is committed to it. 

Yes, humanity — not knighthood nor nobility — the 
great, wide humanity has its first, perhaps its last, fair, free 
chance here. Sighing and broken through ages, it wan- 
dered to this new world. It struck the virgin soil, and 
forth, from the great heart of the land, burst the word, 
FREEDOM ! The waters of a thousand spreading bays and 
shores heard it. The winds took it up, and bore it over 
the wide sea. It smote the sceptre of injustice and oppres- 
sion. It shook the thrones of the world. This is no mere 
figure : it is true. There is nothing which all the crowned 
tyrannies of the world fear and hate, like the example of 
America. We say not, the crowns of the world. We 
have no hostility to royalty as such. We have no hostility 
to it, if it can possibly be reconciled with a just and tem- 
perate freedom : and we see no necessary incompatibility 
between the two. But all the injustice that reigns, all the 
tyranny, all the oppression that reigns in the world, has its 
practical controversy now, with the example of America. 
If we can stand, they must fall. This is the great contro- 
versy : and may God defend the right ! 

Would that it were possible to impress upon the people 
of this country, a sense of their responsibility to God and 
men — to the world and to the hopes of future ages. We 
have humbly attempted to defend our cause against the 
misgivings of the timid at home, and the mistakes of those 
who assail us from abroad. The fact is, they do not know 
this country. We perhaps ought to know better ; and yet 
we, the most of us, have had no opportunity for comparing 
it with others. We have never seen an American trav- 
eller, who in a just and manly spirit has really looked into 
the state of things in Europe, that did not bless, on his 
return, the land of his birth. But they, we repeat, do not 
know us. They have no idea of our fortunate condition. 
They have no idea of the free-hold farms, the neat and 



thriving villages, and the happy and improving communi- 
ties that are spread all over this land. They do not know 
the spirit of this country. And yet we wonder that they 
do not observe, that almost all the great moral and humane 
reforms of the age have proceeded from it ; Popular Educa- 
tion, the Temperance Reform, the Prison Discipline Reform, 
the kinder treatment in Asylums for the Insane, the Min- 
istry for the Poor in Cities, and the Peace Society. Can 
the country be so morally bad, out of which such things 
have sprung? 

But it is time that we should draw to a close. There 
has been one great example of Republican Government in 
ancient times, and it failed. We have stood upon its 
mournful ruins ; and when asked there, what most im- 
pressed us in Rome, we answered, — "To stand still and 
think that this is Rome ! " To stand indeed upon the 
Janiculum or upon the Gardens of Sallust, and cast your 
eye around you ; to think of the stupendous histories that 
have made their theatre within the range of your vision ; to 
think what has passed there, — there where that momen- 
tary glance of your eye falls, — is to submit your mind to 
a more awful meditation than pertains to any other spot of 
earth, with one only exception. But those hills upon 
which has been enthroned the grandeur of successive Em- 
pires — what is written upon their now desolate seats ? 
What is the lesson taught to the world by the sub- 
limest history in the world ? No historian, we doubt, has 
answered this question ; for the philosophy of history is yet 
to be written. 

But, one question there is above all, which presses itself 
upon the American traveller, as he gazes upon that theatre 
of the old Roman story, and that is, — are we, who have 
set the great modern example of Republican freedom, to be 
discouraged by the failure of that ancient experiment? 
Does the awful shadow of the past, that forever lingers 
amidst those majestic ruins, point to the grand experiment 
that is passing on these shores, and say, ' it is all in vain ! ' 
— to the labors of our statesmen and sages, and say, ' they 
are all in vain ! ' — to the blood that has stained our hills 
and waters, and say, ' it has been spilt in vain ! ' This is 
the great question that issues from that sepulchre of Roman 
grandeur — shall America fail ? 



34 

God forbid ! She must not, she will not fail. Chris- 
tianity is here. Educated man is here. Vigor and hope, 
promise and prayer are here. Heaven, that spreads its fair 
sky over a fertile land, is with us. May it breathe its 
blessing into our people's heart, rich as our teeming earth ; 
fresh and bright as the light and breezes of our sky ! 










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